I cannot and I do not wish to blame all of my issues on the fact that my father is incarcerated. However, in trying to avoid the topic or, “crutch” I have come to realize that the coping mechanisms I adapted at an early age in a single parent home affected a very large portion of my personality.
My earliest memory of this adaptation is when my mom would ask me if I knew how to, “tune things out”.
She couldn’t have had the foresight to see how I would adopt that “tuning things out” and apply it to physical and mental trauma throughout my life. I learned how to leave my body. Initially through sound, then sight, and finally space. Honey, I could be in a room and decide I just didn’t want to be around anymore and vacate all my senses. Being raised in a single parent home means you are raised in homes plural. You get passed around to some of everyone, welcome, un-welcome, seen not heard, and merely tolerated.
“In my experience relationships with grandparents, aunties, uncles, and church family became strained because everyone was working double time to supplement the void incarceration created.
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So I opted to isolate and vacate. Trying to find comfort in discomfort. Through this new gaming mode I could escape impoverishment, the excessive shit talking, the people who were watching us while complaining about how much nourishment our growing bodies needed, letdowns and beatdowns because who you gone tell and what they gone do, the deliberately fucked up kitchen hairdos that were most certainly going to generate comments v. compliments at school, and a whole bunch of additional shit I do not care to share at this time.
Just find a corner, sit in it, be quiet and tune it out till it all fades away. Let’s be real it doesn’t just go away. Psychology is like cloud-based storage, unseen, rarely understood, tucked away until you run out of space. That is what I would liken my random breakdowns and outbursts to, a lack of the capacity to store that seemingly random thing.
Cue the crying for, “no apparent reason.” The worry that would take my appetite and have my, “weight down”. So, “why are you flashing?” Try, take, take, take, be nice, disregard the disrespect, question logic, suppress feelings because your tears offend other people. Or just spazz out to clear space. At a moments notice be ready for war with whoever, tear up the house [have to clean it up afterward], fight, cuss out, blackout, rabbid, shoot the coldest looks, if you see me headed in a certain direction with that posture the best advice you can take is to get windy.
“After the episode concluded just before the straight jacket or handcuffs, I would kindly tuck mine in and return to the regularly scheduled programming. ”
I am not a doctor, I have not been diagnosed, but when I go to google I cannot help but to see parallels between my lived experience and what they call dissociative identity disorder. Mental illness runs in my family, I have seen the effects of psychotropics firsthand. I kept a lot under wraps because I just couldn’t go out like that, no shade. By out like that I mean sedated. By out like that I mean rocking somewhere. Instead, opting for an out through text, film, school corridors, etc. Running full speed toward the perceived light at the end of the academic tunnel.
Definition: Dissociation is a disconnection between a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions or sense of who he or she is. This is a normal process that everyone has experienced. Examples of mild, common dissociation include daydreaming, highway hypnosis or “getting lost” in a book or movie, all of which involve “losing touch” with awareness of one’s immediate surroundings. [I would rank my experience moderate]
With this tune out feature, I could just turn the volume down, insert myself into any narrative and perform. I thought I was highly functioning, well adapted to the world. In fact, it was a disguise and I didn’t think anyone could see what I was doing until a few years ago when a close friend at the time asked me, “where do you go?” I was spooked, I was like o, she can see that I exit stage left often. I look stoic but chances are I’m freaking the fuck out on the inside or quelling the fire on that internal rage.
How does this relate to my father’s absence? I never felt covered or advocated for, playing defense so much, I had a hard time learning the other aspects of the game.
Which lead to a general distrust of people, situations and my ability to see clearly. Always searching for unity and community in something or someone, but never really being grounded in self. Feeling like my environment was designed to kill me, or drive me into an institution. I grew up very afraid of everything and everyone.
I began writing this at Adlemy’s request for Essie's Black Mama’s Day Bailouts press conference earlier this month. The Because She Is Powerful: The Political Isolation and Resistance of Women with Incarcerated Loved Ones report was released last week. Please click the link to read the report created by Essie Justice and a number of partner orgs from across the not so United States. The report is derived from over 2,000+ surveys completed by women whose lives have been altered by mass incarceration. I had the honor and privilege of serving on the Demands Committee.
